Wednesday, October 24, 2007

IPhone - Very Long Post


7:54am - We're here, standing in line waiting to get in. People have been camped out since 9pm last night, there are at least three or four thousand people here minimum. Security detail is unreal.

8:11am - Paul Otellini and the CEO of Quanta are here, in the VIP line.

8:23am - Yup, Apple Store is down!

8:56am - We're in! Almost the same seat as last time we did this.

8:57am - Everyone's shuffling in -- including Jobs' family, who just rolled past. When the press barrier came down it was a mad rush to the elevator, people being trampled.

9:06am - Apple's standard tracks are playing: Gnarls Barkley, Coldplay, Gorillaz. You'd think they'd cycle through some of these tunes.

9:12am - "Good morning ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to the Macworld 2007 keynote address." Just a few minutes more now here.

9:14am - Ok, here we go. They're playing James Brown. Unreal applause for Steve -- he's wearing the classic Jobsian garb.


9:15am - People are standing on seats. "We're going to make some history together today."

9:16am - "It was just a year ago we announced we were going to switch to Intel. A huge heart transplant. A beautiful seamless version of OS X for Intel processors. Our hardware team got to cranking out a new Mac with Intel processors every month."

9:17am - "We've had an extremely successful year, I want to thank our users very much. Our retail stores are selling half their Macs to people who've never owned a Mac before. Switchers. More than half the Macs sold in the US are to switchers.Here's a new one soon, Jim Allchin from Microsoft." Heh.




9:18am - They made a Vista ad. Hodgman and Long; he's in a hospital gown, going into "major surgery," upgrading to Vista.

9:20am - "2007 is going to be a great year for the Mac. Over the next several months we're going to roll out some awesome stuff for the Mac. The first thing I'd like to do is give you an update on our music business." Introducing the 5G iPod, nano, and shuffle -- "It's the world's most popular video player by a wide margin, and the new nano is the world's most popular MP3 player by a wide margin. The shuffle is the world's most wearable MP3 player." Chuckles. "We have sold over two BILLION songs on iTunes."



9:21am - "There was an article recently stating that iTunes sales have slowed dramatically; I don't know what data they're looking at..." (Shows chart with insane upward slope.) "We are selling over 5 million songs a day now. That's 58 songs every second... the last time we talked we were the fifth largest music retailer in the US. We have now passed Amazon; we sell more music than Amazon and we are now #4."

9:22am - "And you can guess who our next target might be." (#3 is Target.) "I'm very pleased to report that we have sold 50 million TV shows. Let's go on to movies... when we decided to sell movies, Disney was our pioneering partner. In the first four months of selling movies we have sold 1.3 million movies on iTunes. And today we have a new partner selling movies on iTunes -- that partner is Paramount." Loud applause, people love Paramount. Tomb Raider, Italian Job, Wrath of Khan, Chinatown, Zoolander, School of Rock, Sum of all Fears. "We are moving up to over 250 movies offered on iTunes."

9:23am - "As I said, we have a very strong lineup of players this holiday season. We had a new competitor this holiday season, Microsoft's Zune. How'd they do? They garnered 2% market share in November 2006... we don't have data for December. No matter how you try and spin this, what can you say?" Zune goes aflame. Oh, Steve.

9:26am - New ads. Same vibrant colors dancing spastically on black background to indie rock. It's a party up in here. "Just to let you in on our process a little bit -- these guys are incredibly creative, they just couldn't stop. They took these same dancers and came up with what you're about to see..." another ad, same but this time with graffiti-esque background. Those will be running shortly. "Now I'd like to talk about a product we introduced in September. It's called Apple TV."


9:27am - "You should go with your codename -- I might call this iTV five times, but it's Apple TV. You can buy great content on iTunes... and you can put that content on your iPod. Now you can buy a widescreen TV and hook up an Apple TV to it, and wireless transmit that content to your bigscreen TV. It's that simple. Let's look at the back to refresh ourselves. USB 2, Ethernet, WiFi, HDMI, component, audio, and optical out." Same as it was September, no real surprises here.

9:29am - "Let me tell you more about what this box does. 720p high def video. It's got a 40GB hard drive, which comes in handy for something I'm about to show you... and 802.11b/g/n, and an Intel processor. It's a really cool box. It works with video, music, and photos. You can auto-sync content from your PC, and you can stream content from up to 5 computers."

9:30am - "Let's examine this in a little more detail. Just like in iTunes you can setup your Apple TV -- take my 10 most recent unwatched movies and it'll automatically stream in the background to Apple TV and be stored on the hard drive. So whenever I got to watch something, they're there. I can stream wirelessly from five computers. I can watch it from other computers in the house but it's not stored on the hard drive. PCs or Macs, I just choose the computer of my life." [A MacBook Pro.]



9:31am - Showing screensaver, shows your photos on your TV. Here's what it looks like, Movies, TV shows, Podcasts, music... we have all my movies that are stored on my Apple TV. I can also look at theatrical trailers, streaming right from Apple.com." I'm gonna watch one called the Good Shepherd, let's watch this... " It's demoing live, but somehow we doubt this is 720p, especially on a 40-foot screen. Whatever it is, it looks pretty good. "You can sit on your couch and watch theatrical movie trailers on your Apple TV. Let's play Zoolander, here..."





9:33am - "So that's movies, now let's go take a look at TV shows here. Again, it's incredibly cool, let's check out Heroes." Demoing more video.


9:36am - Still demoing... ok, we're back. "Well, that's TV shows. Now let me show you music. Now iTV is-- heh, Apple TV... it turns out it's awesome for listening to music on your home theater system. Let me go down into playlists here, I've got a favorites playlist, I'll just shuffle some songs to show you what it's like playing some music." Slick black iPod-like interface on screen, CoverFlow... it flips the image. "It does that so it doesn't burn a hole in your plasma TV."

9:37am - "Now let's go to photos -- these are high def, we can see your photos right on your TV. Here's an example of a photo album I made..."


9:38am - "What I've been demonstrating so far is primarily content synced from my computer. Now let's connect to someone else's computer... Phil Shiller my neighbor has come over." Phil's on stage. Phil's carrying a BlackBook -- showing the streamed interface, looking through 30 Rock.

9:39am - "Thank you Phil! That is Apple TV."

9:40am - "We think this is pretty cool. Movies, TV shows, music, and photos all on your widescreen TV. Priced at $299." "And, we'll be shipping them in February, we'll be taking order starting today." "Enjoy your media on your bigscreen TV, we think this is really going to be something special." Steve takes a swig. "Ahem." Apple logo.

9:41am - "This is a day I've been looking forward to for two and a half years." "Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. One is very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple has been very fortunate that it's been able to introduce a few of these into the world. In 1984 we introduced the Macintosh. It didn't just change Apple, it changed the whole industry. In 2001 we introduced the first iPod, and it didn't just change the way we all listened to music, it changed the entire music industry."



9:42am - "Well today, we're introducing THREE revolutionary new products. The first one is a widescreen ipod with touch controls" The crowd goes wild. "The second is a revolutionary new mobile phone."

9:43am - "And the third is a breakthrough internet communications device." Tepid response on that last one, but he almost got a standing ovation on the phone. '


"An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator. An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator.... these are NOT three separate devices!"


"And we are calling it iPhone!"

"Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is..." It's a gag image, cheers.

9:44am - "Before we get into it, let me talk about a category of things ... the most advanced phones are called smartphones. They typically involve a phone, have plastic little keyboards on them, the problem is they're not so smart and they're not so easy to use. If you make a biz school 101 graph, cellphones are at the bottom... smartphones are a little smarter, but they're harder to use."

9:45am - "We don't want to make either one of these things -- we want to make a leapfrog product, smart and easy to use. This is what iPhone is." How the hell are they calling it iPhone, now? Linksys? Cisco?



9:46am - A revolutionary UI, the result of years of development -- the result of years of development." Shows Q, Treo, E62, BlackBerry."

9:47am - "The problem is really in the bottom 40% -- keyboards that are there whether you need them or not. They have control buttons that are fixed in plastic. Every app wants a different button. You can't add new buttons. How do you solve this problem? We solved this problem -- we solved it in computers 20 years ago. A bitmap screen that can display anything we want -- with a pointing device."

"So how are we going to take this to a mobile device? Get rid of all the buttons, and just make a giant screen. So how are we going to communicate? We're going to use a stylus -- no. Who wants a stylus?? Yuck!"

9:48am - "So let's not use a stylus, we're going to use the best pointing device in the world -- our fingers. We have invented a new technology called multi-touch. It works like magic, you don't need a stylus, far more accurate than any interface ever shipped, it ignores touches, mutli-finger gestures, and BOY have we patented it!

9:49am - "We have been very lucky to have brought a few revolutionary user interfaces to the market -- the mouse, the click wheel, and now Multi-Touch. Each has made possible a revolutionary product, the Mac, the iPod, and now the iPhone. We're going to build on top of that with software. Software on mobile phones is like baby-software. Today we're going to show you a software breakthrough. Software that's 5-years ahead of what's on any other phone."

"iPhone runs OS X!"

Huge cheers. "Why would we want to run such a sophisticated OS on a mobile device? It's got everything we need. Multitasking, networking, power management, graphics, security, video, graphics, audio core animation..."





9:51am - "It let us create desktop class applications and networking, not the crippled stuff you find on most phones. These are real desktop applications." He's quoting Alan Kay -"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." "So we're bringing breakthrough software to a mobile device for the first time."

"The second thing we're doing is we've learned from the iPod, it syncs with iTunes. People know how to sync all their media with their iPod. iTunes is going to sync all your media to your iPhone -- but also a ton of data. Contacts, calendars, photos, notes, bookmarks, email accounts..."

9:52am - "We do that through iTunes." It shows 8GB on the screen.

9:52 - "The third thing -- I want to talk a little about design. We've designed something wonderful." 3.5-inch screen, highest resolution screen we've ever shipped, 160ppi. There's only one button, the "home" button.

"It's really thin, thinner than any smartphone. 11.6mm, thinner than the Q and the BlackJack, all of them. Ring and silent, volume up and down."

9:53am - "We have a 2 megapixel camera built right in, let's take a look at the top. A headset jack, 3.5mm, SIM tray, and a sleep-wake switch. Let's look at the bottom, we've got a speaker, mic input, and an iPod connector."


9:54am - We've also got some stuff you can't see -- 3 advanced sensors. It's got a proximity sensor, bring the iPhone to your ear and your display shuts off and toushccreen shuts down. Ambient light sensor -- adjusts brightness, saves power. Third thing is an accellerometer, it can tell whether you're in landscape and portraid. Let's turn it on."

Cingular.


9:55am - "Let's start with the iPod. You can touch your music. Widescreen video, you can find your music faster, gorgeous album art, bilt-in speaker, CoverFlow, why not?"

"Let me show it to you.." Demo time!

9:56am - iPhone is up on screen. He's got digital video running out. He's starting the power on, and has a gesture. Unlocks the phone by sliding finger across -- something you can't do by accident in your pocket.


9:57am - "Here's the home screen -- simple icons. Push this icon -- boom, I'm in the iPod. How do i scroll through my list of artists? I just take my finger and I just scroll." Loud cheers, people are starting to lose it a little. He's picked the Beatles... a sign of things to come?

9:58am - Everything is totally touch, big shiny icons. "I turn my unit landscape mode, and look what happens! "it goes into CoverFlow... not the fastest scrolling. We wouldn't exactly say it scrolls like butter -- but close.

9:59am -"I just pick something and play something -- it's that easy." Plays more. "It's that simple, isn't that great?"
"Alright, I can play with this for a long time." You have been, over two years you say?






"I've also got audiobooks, I've videos. I've got TV shows and movies, this is an episode from the Office..."

10:01am - Touch play control overlays... it looks really good. You can drop into widescreen or pan and scan mode. "Again, on-screen controls, is this cool?"

10:02 - "So that is the iPhone. Pretty cool, huh? We've just started. So again, touch your music, scroll through your songs and your music. "

10:03am - "It's unbelievable. Here's some album art... no matter what you like, it looks pretty doggone gorgeous. ... with onscreen controls. I was giving the demo to someone a little while ago, and I finished the demo and I said what do you think? They said 'You had me at scrolling.'"



10:04am - "We want to reinvent the phone. What's the killer app? The killer app is making calls! It's amazing how hard it is to make calls on most phones. We want to let you use contacts like never before -- sync your iPhone with your PC or mac. Visual voicemail -- wouldn't it be great if you didn't have to listen to five of them to list to the sixth? Just like email you can go directly to the voicemails that interest you. iPhone is a quad-band GSM + EDGE phone." No 3G! "We have WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0"


10:05am - "This is what it looks like when you get a call -- this
is one of our ringtones. I want to show you the phone app, photos, calendar, and SM messaging. The kind of things you'd find on a typical phone. So let's go ahead and take a look. So let's go to our phone first, the phone icon in the lower left corner? Boom, I'm in the phone. I have favorites, contacts, ..." Whoa, they put Jonathan Ive's phone number up on screen. Ummm... not smart Steve, I hope that's a PAYG line.

10:06am - "I can't tell you how thrilled I am to make the first public phone call with iPhone." It's in speakerphone mode.

10:07am - "I remember when we first started working on this..." Phil Schiller's on the other line. "Steve, I wanted to be the first call!"

10:08am - "Hey listen, Phil called, you mind if I conference him in? I just push that right here and now I've created a conference call. "Attendees scrolling up on top. "So here we are and listen, I have to get back to my keynote... Johnny, do you have anything to say on the first phone call?" "It's not to shabby, is it?"








10:10am - "Phil, thanks very much I gotta get back to the keynote now." Demoing favorites, it looks pretty easy, no doubt. "It's that simple to edit these things. I've got recents right here, I can see all my recent phone calls... and those are all the calls I've placed or have gotten. If I want to dial the phone and I'm real last century, I can dial the numbers." Dialing digits, the numbers get smaller as he dials. "Now let me show you visual voicemail, this is a collaboration which I'll talk more about later. It allows us to have random-access voicemail. Oh, there's a voicemail by Al Gore."

10:11am - Tim Cook's voicemail was of revenue results: "You know, this can wait until later..." Laughter.


10:12am - "I can have multiple SMS conversations. Here's the conversation I've been carrying on [shows QWERTY keyboard on screen]. I've got this little keyboard that prevents error, it's really fast to type on, faster than the little plastic keyboards on all those smartphones. 'Sounds great, see you there." Some predictive text it seems, he'd probably rock this thing faster with thumbs. "I can just pick up that conversation where I left off."



10:13am - "The third app I want to show you is Photos -- we also have the coolest photo management ever. Certainly on a mobile device, but I think EVER. Let me go to photos, scroll through here... to go through pictures I just swipe them. There's one that's landscape, I can just turn my device and there it is. I can swipe while I'm in landscape." Audience guy: "Awesome." Steve: "Isn't this awesome??"

10:15am - "So photos, SMS, and the phone app -- that is part of our phone package for iPhone. Really great call management, scroll through contacts with your finger, all the information at your fingertips. Favorites, last century [shows dialer], calendar, SMS texting, incredible photo app, the ability to take any picture and make it your wallpaper. I think you'll agree... we've reinvented the phone."




10:14am - I can just take my fingers and I can move them together and further apart, and make the photo bigger or smaller." HUGE applause -- touch gesturing apparently really hit a chord with these people.

10:16am - "Now let's take a look at an internet communications device. We've got some real breakthroughs here. We've got rich HTML emails on iPhone. It works with any IMAP or POP3 email service. We wanted the best web browser on a phone -- so we picked the best one in the world, Safari. We have Safari running on iPhone -- it's the first fully-usable browser on a cellphone. We have Google Maps." Big applause.

10:17am - "We have widgets, it communicates with the internet over WiFi and EDGE -- you don't have to do anything, it connects to the WiFi seamlessly."


10:18am - "It connects to any POP3 or IMAP email -- Yahoo Mail, MS Exchange, Mac Mail... POP3: Gmail, AOL mail, and most ISPs... let's highlight one, Yahoo mail. Today we are announcing Yahoo will offer free push-IMAP email to iPhone customers. This isn't just IMAP, this is push-email, same as a BlackBerry."

10:19am - "I'd like to show you mail, Google maps... I've got my inbox here, this is running live on Yahoo IMAP email. I've got inline photos, rich-text email. Let's look at another one... again, inline photos, rich text. Shopping list, rich text, pretty cool. iPhone parses out phone numbers, they're in blue and I can just call this place."

10:20am -
"I can look at my email in a split view, just like I'm on my computer. I like the fullscreen view -- we have the standard inbox, drafts, all the folders, real email just like you're used to, right here on your phone. Again, free IMAP email from Yahoo. Let me create an email message, let me show you what that's like... I just type PH and boom, address completion." He's typing slowly... but hey, he's only got one thumb since he's holding the device for the demo. We can't wait to see it in landscape.







Now I want to show you somethign incredible, I want to show you Safari running on a mobile device. I'm going to load in the NYT, rather than just give you the WAP version, we're showing you the WHOLE NYT web site. I can put this into landscape mode and there it is, I can scroll up and down here..."

The resolution is unbelievable looking from back here. We don't yet know the dimensions, but It looks unbelievably fine grained.



10:23am - "I can double-tap and it'll zoom in -- I can make this text bigger if I want to, and there it is. Isn't this cool? There is the New York Times. Unbelievable. You can look at multiple web pages as well, I just push this button in the corner, shrinks it down, and I can add a new page. Let's go to Amazon. I like looking at what DVDs are selling -- I like especially when Disney DVDs are on top."

10:24am - Page is loading, albeit a bit slowly. "And here we are, and there's a section over here, and these are the top sellers. Oh look, Als' An Inconvenient Truth is number one. Now I can go back to the NYT if I want, I can get rid of these by just hitting the X." Looks a bit like the UIQ browser, but much more slick.

10:25am - "I hope you never really know how incredible this is... it's bad out there. This is a revolution of the first order. I'm going to load stock information off the web, and right onto the phone here." Apple's shares up over $2.50. Ha.

10:26am - "I can go look at the weather, let's see what it's like outside... 49 degrees, but we'll just stay in here until it warms up." Showing various time zones, scrolling left and right. "Now, to conclude with the internet device section, I want to show you google Maps on iPhone -- it comes up and I'm going to go to Moscone West. And here we are, boom, I'm going to want a cup of coffee afterwards, so I'm going to search for StarBucks." Shows Gmaps POI info including number and address, which drops right into the dialer. He's calling StarBucks.


"Yes, I'd like to order 4000 lattes to go please. Sorry, wrong number thank you!" Huge laughs, huge applause.

10:29am - "Pinch if I want to, or I can double-tap to zoom in. Let's go somewhere else..." People are rapt, everyone is actually literally leaning forward and on the edge of their seat. We've never seen a presentation like this before.
"Isn't that incredible? Right on my PHONE! Look at this, the Eiffel tower -- isn't that incredible? Here's the last one, the colliseum in Rome."

10:30am - "All these amazing things -- this is a breakthrough internet communicator built right into iPhone." Reviewing the features... "Incredible new technology for entering text, a real browser on the phone, we can zoom in, Google maps, Widgets... it's the internet in your pocket for the first time ever. You can't really think about the internet without thinking about google."

10:31am - "From google what we have on the phone is google search built right into the browser and google maps. We've been working closely with them.. it's my pleaseure now to introduce Dr. Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO."



10:32am - Eric: "I've had the privilege of joining the board and there's a lot of relationships... if we merge the companies we can call it Applegoo -- but I'm not a marketing guy. You can actually merge without merging. Each company should do the absolutely best thing they can do every time, and he's shown it today." Huge applause, again.


10:33am - "We can take the enormous brain trust of the Apple team and the open protocols of companies like google and put them in an environment for end users. From a gooogle perspective we've pushed very hard to partner with Apple and working with many many different data service, -- Steve showed a little bit. It comes together seamlessly. This is the first of a whole new generation..."

"Steve, my congratulations to you, this product is going to be HOT."

10:34am - "As a board member you'll get one of the first ones!" Har. "You also can't think about the internet without thinking about Yahoo. We've got Yahoo search built right in, and we've got Yahoo IMAP email services. So it's my great pleasure to introduce Jerry Yang, co-founder and Chief Yahoo!"


10:35am - Jerry's up on stage, "Thank you Steve. I'm not a board member of Apple, but I'd love to have one of these too. We're really proud of Yahoo to be partnering with Apple. One of the things we're going to be doing is launching some of our new services , Yahoo Go and One Search on this phone. Mail is a killer app on the phone, Yahoo is trying to redesign the web and email experience on mobile devices. The best spam protection, address books, and calendar when you're on yahoo -- It's like BlackBerry without an Exchange Server."

10:36am - "We want to take what Apple's doing reinventing the phone and do that on the internet -- great form factors, user experiences, and UI, and translate them into a seamless internet experience. We want to take the Web 2.0 into the device world -- you have my address Steve, please send it to me."

10:37am - "It's been great having the two greatest companies on the web right down the block. Thank you guys so much, you've really helped us put the internet in the phone.

10:38am - "So, an internet communicator, an iPod, and a phone. Let's put them all together and see what you can do in a real-life scenario..."

10:39am - Another hands-on demo. "Let's see what happens when a phone call comes while listening to music -- music fades out and the call comes through."


10:40am - Phil wants photos to use as his screen saver, one of the phones from Hawaii. Go figure! Steve is emailing the photo -- shrinks, compose window pops up (he's still on the phone with Phil, mind you), and he sends it.

He ends the call, and the music pops right back up, no pauses, no fuss. Uproarious applause.

10:41am - "Today Apple is reinventing the phone. How does this stack up? Let's look at the competition..." Treo, BB, E62, Q... comparing mail, contacts, calendars, web... "Let's see the web, we tried to make it look as good as we could. And this is what you get." Comparing music...

"After today, I don't think anyone's going to look at these phones the same way agaoin."

10:42am - Accessories: stereo headphones with a tiny dongle, mic and a switch. Push it together to answer or hang up on a call.


Bluetooth accessory: headset, black and thin "incredibly small" one button on the top, automatically pairs, "It's really simple."
"It's the coolest one we've ever seen."
Battery life: "A lot of these phones have low battery life. We've managed to get 5 hours of battery of talk time, video, and browsing. 16 hours of audio playback."

10:44am - We've been pushing the state of the art in every facet of this design. We've got the multi-touch screen, miniaturization, OS X in a mobile device, precision enclosures, three advanced sensors, desktop class applications, and the widescreen video iPod. We filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone and we intend to protect them."

"We've advanced the state of the art in every aspect of design. It's the ultimate digital device. So what should we price it at?"

10:46am - "Our most popular iPod is $199 -- what's a smartphone cost? Somewhere around $299 with a two year contract."



He's combined the two for a $499 for the combo-- "What should we charge for the iPhone? We should charge more for this stuff!... "



10:47am -
So how much more than $499 should we price it? We thought long and hard about it... it does so much stuff..." He's stalling for the drama. Enough Steve!

"What should we price it at? For a 4GB model we're pricing it at $499 -- no premium whatsoever.

"We're going to have an 8GB model for just $599."

10:48am - "When's it going to be available? We're shipping them in June -- we're announcing it today because we have to go get FCC approval... we thought it'd be better to introduce this today rather than let the FCC introduce this.
Europe in the 4th quarter of this year, Asia in 2008. "We've chosen Cingular."

"They're going to be our exclusive partner in the US -- it's a unique partnership though. We're going to be doing innovation together. We worked on visual voicemail, the first fruit of this collaboration. We'll be selling iPhone through our own stores and Cingular stores."

10:49am - "It's my pleasure to introduce the CEO of Cingular, Stan Sigman." Why hello Stanny boy.

"We entered into contractual agreement without ever even seeing the phone -- that's because of the confidence I have of Steve to deliver on his vision...

10:50am - "It's a real honor for Cingular to be partnering with Apple -- it's AT&T. Days ago Cingular became a part of the new AT&T..." AT&T logo up on screen.

10:51am - "We're announcing a partnership that takes the mobile phone experience to a new level by bringing together the best network with the best device. Networks are the foundation of what Cingular and AT&T do."

"When it comes to networks AT&T wrote the book -- their quality is legendary. Put this with Apple products together and what do you get? You get the best voice and data experience..." Man this guy is a total snoozer.

10:52am - We've immediately dropped back into cuecard keynote mode, stats on Cingular, stores, distribution, yadda. "We're pleased to partner with Apple to deliver one of the most eagerly anticipated products ever -- the iPhone."

10:53am - "We are changing the way companies work together. Apple and Cingular have a multi-year exclusive partnership. This is not an MVNO -- ours is a unique relationship that lets Apple be Apple, and let's Cingular be Cingular."



10:54am - "iPhone owners will be Cingular and AT&T customers -- they'll get the best network and service in the business. Apple... Cingular... and AT&T have come a long ways."

"I hope you're as excited as we are... this is going to be a terrific ride." Huzzah, he's off stage!

10:56am - And Steve's back... "As Stan's said, we started working together about two years ago, and we come from two different worlds. We love these guys, we're going to bring some great stuff to market over the years together. Let's take a look at this market and how big it is. So how big is this market..." Clickers are dead, even his replacement. "They're scrambling back stage right now." Laughter.

10:56am - "You know, when I was in high school, Steve Woz and I made this little device called the TV jammer -- this little oscillator that put out frequencies that would screw up the TV... We'd go into a dorm at Berkeley we'd screw up the TV while people are watching Star Trek." Ok, we're back...


10:57am -
26m game consoles sold, 94m digital cameras, 135m MP3 players, 209m PCs, 957m phones... 1% market share is 10 million phones. "Exactly what we're trying to do, 1% market share in 2008, 10 million units and we'll go from there."

10:58am - "So, today we've added to the Mac and the iPod, we've added Apple TV, and now iPhone. And you know, the Mac is the only one you really think of as a computer, and we've thought about this and we thought, you know, maybe our name should reflect this better than it does."

"From this day forward we're going to be known as Apple, Inc. We've dropped the computer from our name."

10:59am - "You know, I didn't sleep a wink last night, I was so excited about today. We've been so lucky at Apple, we've had some real revolutionary products. The Mac in 84, the iPod in 2001, and we're gonna do it again with the iPhone in 2007 -- we're VERY excited about this."

"There's an old Wayne Gretsky quote I love -- 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it's been.' That's what we try to do at Apple. Thank you very, very much." Huge, huge applause, standing ovation.

11:00am - "Thank you, thank you. I'd like to highlight the folks that worked on this product... can all the folks here who worked on this product please stand up? Let's give them a round of Applause."

11:01am - "I also can't leave without thanking our families -- they haven't seen a lot of us in the last 6 months. Without their support we couldn't do what we do. You don't know how much we need you and appreciate you, so thank you."

"We've got a really special treat today, we don't have a lot of traditions at Apple besides making great products. One of them is that John Mayer has helped us at every Macworld over the years."

11:02am - "It's our pleasure to welcome John Mayer," who will now play the keynote off. Anyone else remember that Chappelle show sketch?

That's it!

Apple alternatives rival the iPhone

October 24, 2007 - 1:44PM

There's never been as much ado about a mobile

phone as surrounds the iPhone. If you believe the hype, Apple's iPhone must be the be-all and end-all of mobile telecommunication.

In truth, the iPhone, which goes on sale on in Germany on November 9 under exclusive contract with T-Mobile, has its weaknesses.

Moreover, the mobile phones that have long been available in Germany are just as good, if not better.

T-Mobile will offer the iPhone with a two-year contract for 399 euros ($A635). Before shelling out that much money, consumers should take a close look at this phone.

Apple argues the iPhone is actually three devices in one: a mobile phone, an MP3 player and a mobile internet connection.

"If you're just looking at the range of functions, the iPhone does not have anything other mobile phones don't have," says Bernd Theiss of "connect," a Stuttgart-based magazine. Nor is its two megapixel camera much by present standards.

However, the iPhone's user interface is noticeably different from other mobiles. With its touch sensitive screen controlled at the

touch of a finger, it's really easy to use.

"The touch screen is a clear advantage," says Peter Zec, who heads the North Rhine Westphalia Design Centre in Essen.

The touch-sensitive panel lets a user make a phone call just by running a finger over a person's name in the address book.

But the iPhone does not have a monopoly on touch screens. There's also the HTC Touch, which uses the Windows Mobile operating system. However, users need a stylus to enter information and commands.

Nonetheless, its lower price and the fact that it is not limited to one mobile provider, might make the HTC an attractive iPhone alternative.

Vodafone offers the WLAN ready device for 99 ($A157) with contract. It is also available as the MDA Touch at T-Mobile. O2 also has its O2 Xda Nova, based on the Touch. The HTC Touch can also be purchased, without a contract, for 450 ($A715).

Samsung will also present a touchscreen competitor - the F700 - in November. The F700 includes a 2.78 inch colour display and a five

megapixel camera.

Unlike the iPhone and the HTC touch, which use the EDGE standard for data transfer, the F700 offers faster data transfer speeds via UMTS.

Anyone who plans to use their mobile as a multimedia device for playing music and viewing photos needs a lot of memory.

Here, the iPhone is a standout. T-Mobile's iPhone will come with eight GB of memory. The F700, which will be available exclusively through

Vodafone, will come with a 4GB Micro-SD card. Meanwhile, the HTC Touch comes with a one GB memory card.

If design is important, the Prada phone can keep up with the iPhone. The Prada phone, made by Korean manufacturer LG Electronics, even looks a bit like the iPhone.

The Prada phone has been on the market for months. "And it's easy to use," says Zec. The Prada phone is available from O2 with prices starting at 119 ($A189), depending on the kind of contract. Without a contract, the phone can be bought online for about 450 euros ($A715).

Apple's iPhone does not reinvent the wheel. Apple has actually put a lot of good technical details together into an easy to use entity.

"The iPhone is just fun to use," says Theiss of connect.

One interesting feature is its built-in proximity sensor. Whenever the phone senses that it is about to be used for conversations, it

turns its display off to save energy and avoid accidental data input.

Another plus is "visual voicemail," which lets users listen to any message without having to listen to earlier ones.

Apple has built up a true fan base. "For Apple fans, there's obviously no alternative to the iPhone," says Zec.

But when Apple head Steve Jobs says the iPhone is "a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile

phone," consumers should take that as simply a good sales pitch.

It remains to be seen whether the iPhone is as good as the manufacturer claims. The true test of good design, according to Zec, comes after five years, if the user still cannot bear to be parted

from his gadget.